


it only hurts my eyes

by brutalhustler



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: F/M, Friends to Lovers, Light Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-25
Updated: 2018-02-25
Packaged: 2019-03-21 14:56:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13743345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brutalhustler/pseuds/brutalhustler
Summary: Not a day has gone by since Meredith and Orsino’s confrontation that someone hasn’t badgered her about the tension in Kirkwall. The grass is green, the sky is blue, and Kirkwall is tense. Sheknows. She also knows that since it was her dumb luck that finally disposed of the Arishok, that everyone is looking to her for the solution. She can’t even leave the estate anymore without someone looking at her with a mixture of fear and reverence like she’s the fucking savior of the known world and not the woman who once got so drunk she puked in her own bed and, instead of cleaning it up, just rolled onto the floor and slept with her dog.





	it only hurts my eyes

**Author's Note:**

> I've been replaying da2 lately and feeling all sorts of ways about Hawke's emotional state and Varric's solid-ness and this definitely isn't the first fic I wanted to write for this fandom but it's what I was feeling and it demanded that I write it so uhhhhh sorry. 
> 
> Also, I understand that a lot of this is very complain-y about the non-Varric companions but please know that I love them all more than anything and the complaints are coming from an emotionally exhausted Hawke and are not meant with any malice but I completely understand if anyone is bothered by it.
> 
> Set sometime in Act 3.

Hawke sits down at her usual chair in the Hanged Man and drops the collection of grey hairs she’d just spent half an hour carefully ripping out of her head onto the table in front of Varric.

“Gift from Anders,” she says, earning a deep, rumbling chuckle.

“You know,” he says, “I heard those things spread when they come back.”

She groans and drops her head on her hands. Or, attempts to. She misses her mark and smashes her eyes against her knuckles while her forehead hits the rough wood of the table with a dull thunk. She groans again, louder, and feels Varric push a pint towards her.

She mumbles something that sounds suspiciously like, “I love you,” but she can’t actually tell through all the clutter in her brain.

He laughs again and says, “Likely story, Champion.”

“Ugh.” It takes a gargantuan effort but she manages to lift her head off the table enough to take a long drink and glare daggers at him. “Don’t call me that.”

“Rough week?” He asks, tone gentle in a way he would never admit to.

“You could say that.”

 

-

 

Rough _weeks_ , more like. Not a day has gone by since Meredith and Orsino’s confrontation that someone hasn’t badgered her about the tension in Kirkwall. The grass is green, the sky is blue, and Kirkwall is tense. She _knows._ She also knows that since it was her dumb luck that finally disposed of the Arishok, that everyone is looking to her for the solution. She can’t even leave the estate anymore without someone looking at her with a mixture of fear and reverence like she’s the fucking savior of the known world and not the woman who once got so drunk she puked in her own bed and, instead of cleaning it up, just rolled onto the floor and slept with her dog. 

 

Not that her friends are much better.

 

Merrill is the least of her worries, which has come as somewhat of a surprise, but Hawke supposes she’s always been more wrapped up in the past than the present. She spends all of her time at home, deep in thought, cross-legged in front of her murder mirror. So much time in fact that she only remembers Hawke is alive when she needs a favor. A fact that Hawke _wants_ to be bitter about but can’t. Not when it takes her mind off the ogre-sized weight that’s taken up residence on her shoulders. 

 

Fenris is trying to be supportive (or his best likeness of it, which consists mainly of withdrawing into himself and leaving the room anytime someone uses the word _mage_ ) but he’s edgier than usual and his words and glances are sharper. She’s finding it nearly impossible to ignore his and Anders’s constant sniping at each other.

 

Aveline has forgone her usual pastime of nagging and has instead taken to saying _Hawke_ in a tone similar to the one she usually saves for Hawke’s most inappropriate comments. (Hawke knows that she’s just worried and she truly does care but if she’s not careful she’s going to push Hawke right into the Waking Sea.) Hawke doesn’t know how to say _I’m not as strong as you think I am,_ so instead she just hunches her shoulders and says _Hawke_ , mimicking Aveline’s gruff tone.

It’s funny every time, even if Aveline doesn’t seem to think so.

 

Anders goes so far (too far) as to tell her that Bethany would have been disappointed in the way Hawke is handling things. As if he has any idea what Bethany would have wanted. She may have sympathized with her fellow mages, but there’s no way in hell she would have wanted the fucking _war_ that Anders is so intent on starting. Hawke doesn’t know much, but she knows that. He apologizes a few days later and she forgives him a few days after that, but she’s never been closer to slitting his throat than she had been in that moment.

 

Isabela is gone and Hawke wants to be mad (sometimes she gets drunk enough to be sad) but most of the time she’s just jealous. It’s a heavy feeling in her gut every time Orsino sends her a letter from the Gallows or Anders lectures her about her responsibilities or anytime anyone expects _anything_ from her. She can’t tell anymore if it’s strength or weakness that’s stopping her from just saying _fuck everything_ and running away like Isabela did.

 

Varric is her only true friend.

 

-

 

“You’re my only true friend, Varric,” Hawke says, slowly, through the alcohol.

She sighs dramatically. She’s tipped back in Varric’s best chair, bare feet resting on his bed as she sips at a bottle of whiskey. It’s the good stuff — not the swill they serve downstairs — and she’s trying to go slow but not exactly succeeding.

He responds from where he’s hunched over his desk, but Hawke is distracted by the movement of his shoulders under his soft-looking linen shirt and she doesn’t catch it. She peers suspiciously into the bottle and shakes her head.

“No,” she says, without any idea what he said, “it’s true. You’re the only one I can count on. You never want to talk about ma-“ she hiccups, “-mages… or templars.”

He chuckles and her gaze shifts from his shoulders to the swing of his hair, taken out of its ties for the night. She manages to hear his amused, “And yet here you are talking about it.”

“No,” she says, defensive. “I’m not _talking_ about it. I was just saying.”

“You know, some have said the two are actually related. But shit, I’m certainly no scholar.”

She scowls (magnificently, of course) but he doesn’t see so she says, “Varric.”

“Yes, Hawke?”

“Why can’t you just let me thank you?” Is that what she’s doing? She’s not actually sure.

“Oh, is that what you’re doing?” He’s laughing at her. She can _hear_ him.

“Not anymore, it’s not.” She puts down the bottle. “And I’m sleeping in your bed,” she says, already crawling under the heavy covers.

His laughter rumbles across the room and she rubs her face against his pillow.

“We should take a trip,” she says after a moment, “just you and me. When this is all over.”

The laughter fades and it’s silent for a long time. She can feel the weight of the uncertainty that they’ll both survive this and she’s about to start pretending to snore when he finally replies.

“I’d like that.”

She burrows further under the covers and he says, “Goodnight, Hawke.”

 

-

 

Aveline invites her on an “unsanctioned patrol” through Hightown (normal people would refer to this as a “walk”).

Hawke is looking at a truly deadly looking and truly _expensive_ dagger, puffing herself up to use her legendary charm on the Orlesian merchant to finagle a discount when Aveline butts in and says, “Hawke, I don’t mean to pry.”

Hawke smiles at the merchant, hopefully earning points for later, and leads Aveline away so he doesn’t have to hear the lecture she’s about to spew out.

“All right, Aveline, what is it now?”

She furrows her brow, freckled skin bunching tightly around her nose, and her voice is cautious when she speaks. “I know I’ve been… tough. On you lately. It’s just the only way I know how to help.”

Hawke doesn’t respond and keeps her eyes trained on her boots as they walk.

Aveline continues, “I can’t really comprehend what you’re dealing with right now, but it’s your responsibility. No one else’s. And thank the Maker for that, Hawke. You’re the only person I know that’s strong enough to handle this.”

Hawke huffs out a disbelieving breath but doesn’t look up.

“Anyway,” Aveline says, “I just wanted you to know that I’ve got your back. Whatever happens.”

Hawke can’t bring herself to say _this is too much_ or _I can’t please anyone so why not just disappoint everyone_ or _what if you die because of me_ so she just says “I know. Thanks, Aveline.”

Their “patrol” ends at Hawke’s estate and she watches Aveline head towards the keep before making her way to Lowtown.

 

-

 

“Varric!” She walks into his room, arms open wide, smile plastered on her face.

He doesn’t seem to buy it because instead of lighting up or openly weeping, like many do when faced with an open-armed Marian Hawke, he just says, “What’s wrong?”

“Ugh,” her smile falls and she drops into the chair by his bed, _her_ chair, as she’s beginning to think of it. “Just more doom and gloom.”

“Ah. The Aveline Special?”

“That’s the one,” she says. “So, what’s on the agenda for tonight?”

“Paperwork.”

“Always with the paperwork.” She leans back, stretching out her legs. “What a thrilling life you lead.”

“Such is life in the underbelly, Champion.”

“Underbelly. Please. You, Varric of _House Tethras,_ ” she says, mockingly, “are far more respectable than you let on.”

“You wound me, Hawke. It’s _disgraced_ House Tethras.”

She laughs her first real laugh of the day and her shoulders lighten considerably.

 

-

 

Hawke doesn’t notice how much time she’s spending with Varric until she stops by the estate to pick up her third sharpest dagger and Bodahn mentions how good it is to see her. Not something she ever expected to hear in her own home.

When she actually thinks about it, she realizes it’s been over a week since she’s been home. She’s been spending her nights at the Hanged Man, taking up residence in Varric’s suite, and forcing him to sleep in his armchair. She’d told him he was welcome to join her in bed after he’d complained of a sore neck but he’d just grunted and not mentioned it since.

It’s not like she hasn’t stayed with him before, but never like this -- usually it’s because she’s drunk off her ass and he doesn’t trust her to walk home in her condition -- like there's no place else she'd rather be.

She slides her finger along the edge of the dagger, testing the blade. She thinks about the rumble of his voice, the growing pile of her clothes on his floor, the look on his face when she’d invited him to bed with her, and his steady hands on Bianca, fighting by her side for six long years.

A light goes off in her head and she’s out the door, dagger completely forgotten, before the blood from her finger reaches the floor.

 

-

 

It’s not yet evening, but Varric has already retired to his suite by the time Hawke gets there. A small miracle. She doesn’t want anyone to hear what she has to say, just in case she’s wrong.

He’s hunched over his desk when she gets there, his novel-writing hunch, which is significantly different from his paperwork hunch or his letter-writing hunch.

If she was a different person she would leave him to it, but she’s not and she also knows that _because_ she’s not Varric will forgive her for interrupting.

“What are you writing?”

He doesn’t look up and he sounds distracted when he says, “Romance.”

“Ah,” she says, “a tricky topic.” She sits on the edge of his bed and tries again. “Does it have a happy ending?”

“Um, no.”

“Pity.”

He must hear something in her voice because he stops writing and looks up.

She looks at the ink smudges on his hand and his forehead and says, “Could it?”

He looks into her eyes in a way that feels entirely new to her and says, “It could.”

If Varric was anyone else she’d say he sounds nervous, or, at the very least, cautious, when he says, “You know they’re saying the Champion of Kirkwall is finding solace in her trusty dwarf’s bed?”

“Oh yeah?” Her breath catches in her throat.

“Yeah.”

“Hm. Well, technically they’re right.” She gestures at the bed below her and he snorts. Some of the tension between them dissolves and she continues, “I don’t suppose they mention anything about how the Champion’s trusty dwarf is far too good for her and she’s lucky to have him?”

He rises from his chair, ignoring the flutter of his papers falling to the floor behind him. She presses on, cutting off anything he might be about to say, “If she can have him?”

If asked, she would say she’s not sure how it happened, but suddenly he’s in front of her, hand rough and warm on her cheek.

“She could,” he says, gruff and low.

She presses a kiss to his palm and feels her eyelashes brush against his fingers.

 

-

 

She wakes up in Varric’s arms, his fingers brushing through her hair.

“Good morning,” he says, chest rumbling against her.

“Good morning,” she says. 

She sits up and dislodges his fingers, forcing a sound of shock out of him.

Before he can protest, she says, “Did you know you snore? Someone is going to have to update the adoring public.”

He wraps a hand around her hip and laughs as she shivers. “I’ll leave that one to you, Hawke.”

She sighs, long-suffering. “I have to do everything around here.”

 


End file.
